The traffic in holy relics was one of the biggest scams perpetuated by the medieval Catholic church, ranking up there with the sale of indulgences. Relics were tourist attractions in the middle ages, just like they are today. Back in the medieval world, an insignificant local parish could become wealthy and famous by attracting pilgrims, so it's not very surprising that relics were in high demand. They could be almost anything -- the bones of a saint, a lock of a martyr's hair, the "Holy Prepuce," the fingernails of an early church father, a vial of sweat from the brow of Jesus, a scrap of wood from the True Cross, etc., etc. Most, if not all of them, were fake, of course, but the faithful never asked any questions.
Relics are sacred power objects. They're also infectious, i.e., the magical power in a relic can be transferred to another object by contact, thus creating an almost infinite supply of relics which can then be set up in their own shrines.
"...relics aren't necessarily always body parts," according to Vice. "They come in three different flavors: First-class relics are body parts, second-class relics are pieces of clothing or things the saints touched while they were alive, and third-class relics are objects that other relics have touched. A relic has power no matter where it falls on this hierarchy, which is why you have so many lying around, and so many folks praying to them."
Body parts had the most talismanic power and were highly prized for their ability to extract money from pilgrims. For example, the bones of Saint Nicholas were thought to exude "a clear watery liquid which smells like rose water, called manna (or myrrh), which is believed by the faithful to possess miraculous powers," according to Wikipedia. The pilgrims who came to see these holy objects provided a major boost to local economies. Like modern tourists, they had to eat and sleep somewhere while they were in town. They would buy food, lodging and local products, not to mention the donations they made to the church.
Pilgrims still pay homage to the relics of St. Nicholas.
Abrahamic religions supposedly condemn idolatry, but if this isn't idolatry, I don't know what is. And there's no telling where these venerated objects came from originally. The conventional history of Nicholas's relics is a classic example of the way the relic traffic worked in the medieval world:
"Nicholas' tomb in Myra had become a popular place of pilgrimage. Because of the many wars and attacks in the region, some Christians were concerned that access to the tomb might become difficult. For both the religious and commercial advantages of a major pilgrimage site, the Italian cities of Venice and Bari vied to get the Nicholas relics. Taking advantage of the confusion, in the spring of 1087, sailors from Bari in Apulia seized part of the remains of the saint from his burial church in Myra, over the objections of the Greek Orthodox monks." (Wikipedia)
That's one story, anyway. There was no method for determining the authenticity of body parts in the middle ages, so the sailors could've just brought back some animal bones and passed them off as the bones of Saint Nicholas. Who would know the difference? And who knows if the original bones in Myra actually belonged to the saint? One way or another, the monks had good reason to complain about the theft of their valuable relics. Without them, they'd go out of business.
The Shroud of Turin, probably the most famous talismanic object associated with the Catholic church, is still a source of revenue. The church doesn't charge to view the shroud, but it attracts thousands of visitors every year and all kinds of shroud-related trip packages, hotel deals and walking tours are available at a price (1). And the controversy over the shroud's authenticity has spawned a minor publishing market for books arguing one side or another.
(1) Catholic pilgrimages, like Holy Land vacation deals, are a big business, and sometimes include an "audience with the Pope," assuming he isn't busy telling Europe to open its borders to unlimited immigration or trying to figure out how to deal with the church's latest pedophile scandal.
Next video shows Pope Francis praying in front of the Shroud of Turin back in 2015.
The belief in relics is still alive and well. In the case of the shroud, which is almost certainly a medieval forgery, many Christians are convinced that it actually shows the face of Christ despite the fact that no one knows what Jesus looked like (assuming that he ever actually existed). As for relics in general, a lot of people, especially in the third world, still believe that the remains of saints and various objects associated with church legends have some kind of supernatural power to heal disease and forgive sins.
In other words, a lot of Christians are devout fetishists.
"The ruined church and monastic buildings that still stand on the island today are not Anglo-Saxon; they are the remains of the new priory built on the island in the late 11th century by the monks of Durham. So where is the original monastery? And what happened to it after the attack?" Source: DigVentures.
"All that is known to survive are some carved stone monuments of Anglo-Saxon date, which were found by archaeologists clearing away some of the collapsed rubble from the priory ruins in the late 19th and early 20th century."
Note: "... a major ... geophysical survey funded by National Geographic was carried out by Durham University in September 2012. This has shown that there is limited archaeological evidence for the monastic boundary that had previously been postulated, but an alternative boundary has been identified, which is associated with an area of possible industrial activity. It also identified a probably infirmary cloister associated with the later priory and a possible structure aligned on the two standing churches." Source: Durham University.
Chartres Cathedral is a spectacular example of the way Christianity usurped the old pagan religions and literally built its churches over the sacred sites of the pagan world in an attempt to erase them from history.
According to Chartres Cathedral.net, "the town of Chartres has been of religious importance since ancient times. It was the site of Druid ceremonies, which were held around a well that was later discovered under the cathedral crypt.
"Sometime later, a Gallo-Roman temple stood on the same spot. The early Christians erected a basilica there during the 4th century, and St. Bernard preached the Second Crusade there in 1146. Later in history, Chartres was the coronation site of Henry IV in 1594."
Chartres is surrounded by legends, many of which can be traced back to pagan beliefs. According to Ancient Origins, "[the legendary roots of the site] come from the time when Druids, the Celtic priests of Britain and Gaul, held sacred rites there." A Druidic statue of the mother goddess of infants found at the site may have inspired the Christian legend that the pagans "had foretold the story of a virgin who would give birth to a child for the good of the world." This is speculative, but it makes sense considering the way the Christians hijacked pagan beliefs to support their new religion.
"During the Gallo-Roman times, the underground waters of the site were believed to have been revered by the Druids. Legend also says that Roman soldiers attacked Christians while they were celebrating their faith at the virgin shrine. It seems that Christians identified the mother goddess of the Druids with the virgin Mary." (Ibid)
The cathedral has been associated with the Knights Templar, the famous Catholic military order founded in 1199 to protect pilgrims traveling to the Kingdom of Jerusalem after its liberation by the First Crusade. Originally consisting of only nine men who could do little more than provide an armed escort for pilgrims to the Holy Land, the order grew into one of the richest and most powerful organizations of its day until it was violently suppressed and virtually exterminated in 1307.
Surrounded by conspiracy theories then as now, "[t]he Knights Templar have become associated with legends concerning secrets and mysteries handed down to the select from ancient times," (Wikipedia). According to Ancient Origins, the Chartres cathedral's association with the Templars comes from the two black madonnas which can be seen there:
"According to legend, the Black Madonna was a lady of the Templars. The statue of the Black Madonna with a child was commissioned in 1508. It is perhaps a black wooden copy of the silver Madonna that was located on the main altar before. The statue sits on the top of the pillar and is often called the ''Lady of the Pillar''. Before the French Revolution, the Chartres Cathedral had a second Black Madonna in the crypt. Unfortunately, it was probably burned during the revolution, although some resources are convinced that the church didn't suffer in this period. Today, tourists and pilgrims can see a copy in the church that was made in 1857. "
These black madonnas are apparently found in churches all over France and other countries in Europe.
"Throughout Europe, especially in France, about 500 Black Madonnas, painted or carved in wood or stone, stand in Catholic churches, with a few in museums. Most date from the 11th to the 15th centuries. These medieval images of the Virgin holding the Christ Child gaze benignly on their devotees, who come as pilgrims and associate them with miracles and healing." Source: Europe Up Close.
I'm not sure what to think about the Templar connection with these images, but they seem to have a pre-Christian origin. According to Europe Up Close, "[m]any scholars say that the Black Madonna is a link to religions that existed long before Christianity. Her shrines are often in locations that were once pagan shrines to Diana, Artemis of Ephesus, Cybele and other goddesses. Some Black Madonna figures look just like the Egyptian goddess Isis with her infant son Horus, showing the influence of old ways on changing faiths. Even further back than that, she may represent the archetypal Earth Mother, the ancient, eternal power of the feminine force."
The great Oswald Spengler saw the Gothic cathedrals as prime symbols of the Faustian spirit of Western civilization, but even though Spengler believed that the Classical and Western worlds were fundamentally separate, the pre-Christian influences on Christianity, especially on Catholicism, can be seen both in its teachings and its architecture. These fantastic cathedrals contain all sorts of mysteries that can be traced back to very ancient times. As for the Chartres cathedral, was being restored back in 2015 (I'm not sure if the work has been completed yet). The renovation apparently created a lot of controversy.
Comment: Welcome to Clown World, UK. I'm not religious, but installing fun rides and miniature golf courses in medieval cathedrals is a sacrilege. There's no other word for it. Of course, this is exactly the kind of stunt you'd expect from the ultra-liberal and largely secularized Church of England, a once powerful institution which has been in decline for decades:
"The number of people who identify as belonging to the Church of England has dropped to a record low in an 'unrelenting decline' that could threaten the denomination’s future, research suggests." Source: The Independent (2018).
"CofE affiliation has fallen to just 2 per cent among adults aged 18 to 24, while the majority of every age group now has no religion, the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey found.
"The number of Britons who describe themselves as part of the church has more than halved since 2002, from 31 per cent to 14 per cent. The number who actually attend sermons is far lower."
The decline of the CofE is just one part of a much larger story -- the collapse of the West and the transformation of Christianity into a third-world religion.
"French prosecutors have ruled out deliberate criminal action in the April fire that destroyed the roof and spire of Notre Dame cathedral, but are investigating possible negligence." Source: Breitbart.
"After two months of preliminary investigation, the Paris public prosecutor’s office announced on Wednesday that the initial inquiry into the fire at the Notre-Dame-de-Paris has been completed, and that 'no element' of their investigation backs the hypothesis that the blaze was of criminal origin."
Comment: No big surprise here. If the investigators had found evidence that the fire was started deliberately, they never would have admitted it. Meanwhile, there has been a "major surge" in attacks on churches in France over the last two years. Ranging from arson to acts of desecration and vandalism, some of these attacks were carried out by Muslims, others by radical leftists. I have no evidence that the Notre Dame fire was arson, but considering the culture war which has been going on in France it's hard to believe that it was just an accident.
"Modernists, after all, have done far more damage in the long run to the urban fabric of Europe than even the Second World War did; and it stands to reason that they, the modernists, would not want anything to escape their attentions for long, lest anything remain intact to shame by painful comparison their own wretched efforts." Source: TakiMag.
"Exorcism is going multi-denominational. Where once those competing for the souls of followers would burn each other as heretics and engage in bloody wars, the world’s mainstream Christian denominations are now rallying together to battle a resurrected threat." Source: Perth Now.
"And that’s no less than Satan himself.
"The Roman Catholic Church has for the first time opened up its annual exorcism class in Rome to representatives of all major Christian faiths. The Pontifical University of Regina Apostolorum is a Vatican-affiliated university in Rome that has been conducting the increasingly popular annual exorcism conventions for Catholic priests for the past 14 years."
Video from 2010.
Note: Exorcism or similar beliefs and practices go way back:
"The use of protective means against the real, or supposed, molestations of evil spirits naturally follows from the belief in their existence, and is, and has been always, a feature of ethnic religions, savage and civilized. In this connection only two of the religions of antiquity, the Egyptian and Babylonian, call for notice; but it is no easy task, even in the case of these two, to isolate what bears strictly on our subject, from the mass of mere magic in which it is embedded. The Egyptians ascribed certain diseases and various other evils to demons, and believed in the efficacy of magical charms and incantations for banishing or dispelling them. The dead more particularly needed to be well fortified with magic in order to be able to accomplish in safely their perilous journey to the underworld (see Budge, Egyptian Magic, London, 1899). But of exorcism, in the strict sense, there is hardly any trace in the Egyptian records." Source: New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia.
Exorcism is usually associated with the Catholic Church and backwoods fundamentalist denominations, but rituals for casting out demons and other types of spirits have also been used by Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews and Taoists over the millennia. (Wikipedia) And the practice is still relatively common around the world. For instance, the next video shows a Buddhist Ghost Exorcising Festival which took place in Bejing in 2015.
Despite the fact that magic and religion are supposed to be different things [1], exorcism is undoubtedly a magical ritual since it relies on sacred ceremonies and the recitation of adjurations, etc., to ward off or drive a supernatural entity out of a place or a human body. How is this different in practice from, say, a pagan magic ritual designed to calm a storm or appease the gods and guarantee a safe passage?
"For the storm lasted for three days; and at last the Magians, by using victims [cut up in pieces and offered to the manes] and wizards' spells on the wind, and by sacrificing also to Thetis and the Nereids, did make it to cease on the fourth day." (Herodotus)
[1] "Magic is a category into which have been placed various beliefs and practices considered separate from both religion and science." (Wikipedia)
The fact that exorcism is still practiced by the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations provides more evidence, I think, that Christianity is a polytheistic religion.
Exorcism, by definition, is "the religious or spiritual practice of evicting demons or other spiritual entities from a person or an area..." (Wikipedia) Polytheism is, by definition, "the worship of or belief in multiple deities," so the question of whether a belief in demons makes you a polytheist boils down to whether you think demons or "spiritual entities" qualify as deities.
The word "deity" has various associations. It can mean a god or goddess, a "supernatural being considered divine or sacred," but it has also been defined as "a being with powers greater than those of ordinary humans ... who interacts with humans, positively or negatively, in ways that carry humans to new levels of consciousness, beyond the grounded preoccupations of ordinary life..." (Wikipedia)
Demons may not be as powerful as God, but they are still supernatural entities with powers greater than those of ordinary humans. They are part of a hierarchy of spiritual beings. It might be more accurate to call them demigods, a term that was originally "used to render the Greek and Roman concepts of semideus and daemon." (Wikipedia) "Demon" comes from "daemon" which was the original meaning of "demigod," and demigods are minor deities.
In some cases, demons are or were actual pagan gods. The demon in the Exorcist, for instance, was Pazuzu, a "character from Assyrian and Babylonian mythology ... considered the king of the demons of the wind, and the son of the god Hanbi..." (Wikipedia) If Jesus, the son of Yahweh, is a deity, then so is the demon Pazuzu, the son of Hanbi.
Modern exorcists believe that there are other supernatural entities active in the world besides God. Some of these entities are demons who were once fallen angels. Others are pagan gods transformed into demons by the church. This belief in a hierarchy of spiritual beings is fundamentally pagan and polytheistic.
"An architecture firm has proposed replacing the roof of Notre Dame Cathedral with a swimming pool, as France prepares to launch an international competition to restore the fire-damaged gothic edifice to its former glory." Source: The Guardian.
"After the roof and spire of Notre Dame were damaged in a fire watched worldwide in April, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said he was open to a 'contemporary gesture' in rebuilding it 'more beautiful than before', and the prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, called for a new spire 'adapted to the techniques and the challenges of our era'".
Translation: Architecture firms trying to land a lucrative contract have submitted various proposals for ways to destroy what's left of Notre Dame Cathedral. The idiotic and hugely unpopular French president has said that he's open to turning this historical landmark into a postmodern monstrosity.
I have to admit that the trollish suggestion about turning the cathedral into a car park made me laugh out loud. Meanwhile, let's hope that the Yellow Vests can drive Macron and his flunkies out of power before they can do to France what these architecture firms want to do to the cathedral. Unfortunately, it looks like the protests are running out of steam:
"Top French design bureau Vincent Callebaut Architectures has gone viral with its plans to replace the roof of the medieval cathedral with a glass shell filled with solar panels." Source: RT.
"Underneath will be a 'sustainable' farm capable of producing 21 tons of fruit and vegetables each year, to be given out for free to the homeless. Not coincidentally perhaps, this is at least the third eco-garden proposal that has been made public, while the vast majority of the submitted designs for the planned reconstruction feature a glass roof."
Comment: All I can say is that I hope whoever is making the decisions here keeps these modern architects away from the cathedral.
Meanwhile, we haven't heard anything at all about what caused the fire that did so much damage to this fantastic historical monument. According to the last reports I read, investigators were focusing on "short circuits and cigarettes," but that was several weeks ago. The fire seems to have vanished from the news completely, which isn't too surprising, I guess. We live in a time when major disasters come and go as if they never happened.
Is the investigation still in progress? Who knows? If this follows the usual pattern, we'll get some throwaway official announcement a couple months from now and that will be the end of it. We can be sure of one thing, though. If the investigators find evidence that the fire was set deliberately, we'll never hear about it.
Note: "French officials are warning people near Notre Dame Cathedral that lead contamination is high in the closed-off plazas and streets surrounding it." Source: Live Science.
"The reason? Building practices reaching back thousands of years. The medieval structure and its later additions — including the famous spire — contained lead, which fell to the ground during the fire that broke out on April 15.
Comment: The Eucharist or Holy Communion is clearly an act of symbolic cannibalism, so it's not too surprising that the Romans, acting on vague reports of Christian rituals, would have accused the new cult of practicing actual cannibalism.
The negative Roman view of the early Christians was partly based on distorted rumors about their practices. For instance, the Christians were accused of incest because they called each other "brother and sister." And the charges of cannibalism were especially repulsive.
The Romans would have associated the stories of how Christians ate the flesh and drank the blood of their god with sieges, barbaric eastern cults and legends from Greek mythology: the Thyestean Feast, for instance, in which Atreus killed Thyestes' sons, cooked them and served them to their unknowing father. The stories aren't the same, of course, but the difference between the Communion and real cannibalism would have been lost on the practical-minded Romans.
In this case, it's hard to blame the Romans because the new religion did practice cannibalism. Symbolic cannibalism. And it still does.
Christians do what they can to obfuscate this strange practice, but it's hard to explain away the real significance of what they're doing. When Christians take communion, they are participating in an act of ritual magic in which the bread and wine are miraculously transformed into the actual body and blood of Christ. If that isn't symbolic cannibalism, I don't know what is.
Ritual cannibalism, whether it's symbolic or real, is designed to produce a spiritual transformation. For example, warrior societies often believed -- and some still believe -- that they could absorb the power of their enemies by eating them. In the same way, the follower of a god could literally absorb the spirit and power of the god through an act of sacred cannibalism.
The Communion, a ritual with ancient pagan roots, is surrounded by a fog of mystery and mystical jargon designed to obscure its real meaning, and some theologians, in typical fashion, defend it by claiming that it simply can't be understood. According to New Advent, for instance, "the Church honors the Eucharist as one of her most exalted mysteries, since for sublimity and incomprehensibility it yields in nothing to the allied mysteries of the Trinity and incarnation." [Emphasis added]
In other words, Christianity is a mystery religion.
The connection between the Eucharist and cannibalism is so clear that theologians are compelled to try to explain it away using doubletalk, hairsplitting and paradox to deny the obvious:
"If Catholics believe the Eucharist really is the body and blood of Christ, then they believe they are eating human flesh and drinking human blood," according to The Catholic Thing (2011). "But while holy Communion does involve eating human flesh and blood, it is not true that it is cannibalistic."
In other words, cannibalism is not cannibalism, which, by definition, is the eating of human flesh by another human being.
The article goes on to make several arguments against the idea that the Communion is actually a form of ritual or symbolic cannibalism, but none of them are very convincing. For instance, cannibals supposedly only eat the dead, but "the Eucharist is life." Therefore, the Communion can't be cannibalistic. Likewise, "the Eucharist is the whole body and blood of Jesus Christ [but] cannibals only take part of their victims." Apparently, you're not a cannibal if you eat the living and clean your plate.
Most of the arguments here are based on mysticism. For example, the Communion isn't cannibalistic because "when a Catholic receives the Eucharist, he is receiving not just flesh but glorified flesh, a resurrected and transfigured 'super body' that foreshadows the new reality of a new Heaven and a new earth." I'm not sure that this is much of an argument, though. It makes it sound like the Eucharist isn't just cannibalism, but the glorified cannibalism of a super-body with transcendental powers.
I could go on with this, but why bother? Eating human flesh and drinking human blood is obviously cannibalistic even if the flesh and blood are purely symbolic. The truth is that the Eucharist is an act of theophagy -- "feeding on a god" -- with roots in very ancient, pre-Christian fertility rituals. Theophagy is "the act of eating one's god, either literally or symbolically," according to the Free Dictionary. And millions of Christians eat their god on a regular basis around the world.
It's not surprising to find a ritual like this at the very heart of a religion which originated as a mystery cult in Hellenized Israel.
The Catholic Holy Relic Racket
The traffic in holy relics was one of the biggest scams perpetuated by the medieval Catholic church, ranking up there with the sale of indulgences. Relics were tourist attractions in the middle ages, just like they are today. Back in the medieval world, an insignificant local parish could become wealthy and famous by attracting pilgrims, so it's not very surprising that relics were in high demand. They could be almost anything -- the bones of a saint, a lock of a martyr's hair, the "Holy Prepuce," the fingernails of an early church father, a vial of sweat from the brow of Jesus, a scrap of wood from the True Cross, etc., etc. Most, if not all of them, were fake, of course, but the faithful never asked any questions.
Relics are sacred power objects. They're also infectious, i.e., the magical power in a relic can be transferred to another object by contact, thus creating an almost infinite supply of relics which can then be set up in their own shrines.
"...relics aren't necessarily always body parts," according to Vice. "They come in three different flavors: First-class relics are body parts, second-class relics are pieces of clothing or things the saints touched while they were alive, and third-class relics are objects that other relics have touched. A relic has power no matter where it falls on this hierarchy, which is why you have so many lying around, and so many folks praying to them."
Body parts had the most talismanic power and were highly prized for their ability to extract money from pilgrims. For example, the bones of Saint Nicholas were thought to exude "a clear watery liquid which smells like rose water, called manna (or myrrh), which is believed by the faithful to possess miraculous powers," according to Wikipedia. The pilgrims who came to see these holy objects provided a major boost to local economies. Like modern tourists, they had to eat and sleep somewhere while they were in town. They would buy food, lodging and local products, not to mention the donations they made to the church.
Pilgrims still pay homage to the relics of St. Nicholas.
Abrahamic religions supposedly condemn idolatry, but if this isn't idolatry, I don't know what is. And there's no telling where these venerated objects came from originally. The conventional history of Nicholas's relics is a classic example of the way the relic traffic worked in the medieval world:
"Nicholas' tomb in Myra had become a popular place of pilgrimage. Because of the many wars and attacks in the region, some Christians were concerned that access to the tomb might become difficult. For both the religious and commercial advantages of a major pilgrimage site, the Italian cities of Venice and Bari vied to get the Nicholas relics. Taking advantage of the confusion, in the spring of 1087, sailors from Bari in Apulia seized part of the remains of the saint from his burial church in Myra, over the objections of the Greek Orthodox monks." (Wikipedia)
That's one story, anyway. There was no method for determining the authenticity of body parts in the middle ages, so the sailors could've just brought back some animal bones and passed them off as the bones of Saint Nicholas. Who would know the difference? And who knows if the original bones in Myra actually belonged to the saint? One way or another, the monks had good reason to complain about the theft of their valuable relics. Without them, they'd go out of business.
The Shroud of Turin, probably the most famous talismanic object associated with the Catholic church, is still a source of revenue. The church doesn't charge to view the shroud, but it attracts thousands of visitors every year and all kinds of shroud-related trip packages, hotel deals and walking tours are available at a price (1). And the controversy over the shroud's authenticity has spawned a minor publishing market for books arguing one side or another.
(1) Catholic pilgrimages, like Holy Land vacation deals, are a big business, and sometimes include an "audience with the Pope," assuming he isn't busy telling Europe to open its borders to unlimited immigration or trying to figure out how to deal with the church's latest pedophile scandal.
Next video shows Pope Francis praying in front of the Shroud of Turin back in 2015.
The belief in relics is still alive and well. In the case of the shroud, which is almost certainly a medieval forgery, many Christians are convinced that it actually shows the face of Christ despite the fact that no one knows what Jesus looked like (assuming that he ever actually existed). As for relics in general, a lot of people, especially in the third world, still believe that the remains of saints and various objects associated with church legends have some kind of supernatural power to heal disease and forgive sins.
In other words, a lot of Christians are devout fetishists.
Related:
Pilgrimage Routes and the Cult of the Relic
Hoaxes of the Middle Ages
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